Two weeks into our home ownership in 2002, curiosity nibbled at me like a mosquito at dusk in a Minnesota summer. What was underneath the beige carpeting in the bedroom? All the other rooms on the main level had hardwood floors—except for the kitchen, which was suffocated in a dated linoleum. But how could I rest if I didn’t know about the bedroom? And how could I know if I didn’t take a peek?
Bolstered by the expression “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission,” I waited for Husband to leave for work one day. After he was gone, I peeled up a corner of the bedroom’s carpeting, which flowed into a tiny hallway. It was all or nothing. If I ripped up some of it, it would all have to go. So it all went, and I stood back, assessing the scene.
The bedroom floor was paint-spattered, and the hallway was covered with old, brittle linoleum. I chipped away the ancient flooring to discover a wooden floor grate, gummed up with a black, sticky residue. But I was a visionary; cleaned off, it would be beautiful. And it wouldn’t take too long to refinish it, would it?
When Husband returned home, my impromptu project startled him. He wasn’t happy, but had I lit the proverbial fire under him? Yes, I had. So after lugging out the old carpeting, which I had left in the dining room in more of a pile than a roll, he borrowed a floor sander from my Uncle K. The floor project scaled up the mountain of priorities like a pro rock climber.
The refinishing job was more involved than my initial estimate. Before sanding, we needed to remove, by hand, all the staples and nails that had secured the carpeting. Husband did the work in flip-flops.
“Your choice of footwear scares me,” I said.
“You worry too much.” He swung the claw hammer at a nail. It missed its mark but found his big toe and plunged into it.
When the bleeding stopped, the work resumed. Husband and I completed the sanding, applied three coats of polyurethane, and eventually the floors gleamed.
I sidled up to him with a coy smile. “Now aren’t you glad I gave you the nudge to do this?”
“Hm,” he said.
In 2008, after someone kicked in our door, catapulting its lock mechanism across the living room, we decided we should probably replace it, and this time the door wouldn’t have a window in it to showcase the inside of our home to eager onlookers. Husband bought a new one—three times the weight of the previous one and inches bigger—from Siwek Lumber in northeast Minneapolis. He showed me his choice, knocking on it to flaunt the strength of the solid, six-paneled oak beauty.
I nodded. “Nice.” A thought zinged me. “When you trim it down, you’re gonna cut the same amount off each side, right?”
He tossed me that look. “Of course.”
Hanging a door seems simple enough, but when one hangs a door in an almost century-old home, one quickly learns that nothing about that home is exact—particularly the size and shape of the doorways.
In the garage, Husband made some adjustments to the slab of oak and muscled it into the house to check the fit. Not quite right. He heaved it back out, made more adjustments, and hauled it in again. Still no. In and out, in and out.
After six times of trying the door on for size, it slid into place. He attached the hinges and inserted the lock and handle. The color drained from his face, though, and he shot me a withering look, one I could tell was aimed at himself more than at me.
I scrutinized the door. “Oh no.”
The right answer was to not cut off the same amount on both sides. The door lock and handle plate no longer fit. I cringed. Silent, Husband humped the door back out to the garage, climbed into his truck, and drove to Siwek’s for the second door purchase of the day.
Husband’s basement bathroom project spanned a few years. After the plumbing was roughed in, he plugged the hole—where the toilet would eventually sit—with an old rag. One day, however, we discovered a putrid mess all over the bathroom floor. When the repairman came, he told us something interesting; the built-up gases had sucked the rag into our main drain sewer line, causing the backup and spill. We cleaned up the nightmare, and Husband stuffed another rag into the hole. After the second Raw Sewage Fiasco of 2006, however, he learned about $2.00 rubber plugs.
In the spring of 2007 when I returned home from a trip to London with Mom, Husband led me down the basement stairs. Excitement flipped my stomach.
“Close your eyes,” he said before we got to the bathroom.
When I opened my eyes again, my dream materialized. “It’s perfect.”
“When I put in the heating mat under the tile, I didn’t get it far enough that way.” He pointed out an area on the floor, shaking his head. “There, of all places.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I drank in the details of the new room. He had done the ceramic tile with precision and painted the walls the same color as the green bead in my favorite bracelet. “The floor is toasty from where I’m standing.”
He frowned. “Well, it irritates me.”
I waved away his concerns. “Who needs warm feet when they’re using the toilet? And when they’re done showering, why the need to step onto a warm floor? They’ll probably be overheated at that point anyway.”
I may not have convinced Husband, but we had a new bathroom, and that was enough for me.
Over the years, we’ve learned some home improvement lessons. The mistakes have been funny or maddening, the process frustrating or exhilarating. And sometimes the ordeals made my back ache—like the time Husband, in a burst of paternal nesting, renovated the kitchen while I was pregnant, and every day for six weeks, my big belly and I had to bend over the side of the bathtub to wash dishes.
But that’s a story for another day.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.